Resources:
– See http://secondrealm.net/ for resources on The Second Realm and to download the PDF/eBook on Strategy.
– In Praise of Hawala is an excellent essay by J. Orlin Grabbe on Hawala.
– End of Tenancy Cleaning London

Topics

INTRO:

The Iranian terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq are no longer terrorists according to the US State Department.

In the past years, many US talking heads have been high-paid shills, agitating for delisting the group despite the US law making it a felony to provide material support for a terrorist group. The shills include Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, Tom Ridge, Michael Mukasey, Andrew Card, and Alan Dershowitz.

Most astounding is that list includes some of the most vocal proponents for prosecution of individuals and groups providing humanitarian aid and dispute-resolution counseling for listed groups.

The delisting will pave the way for US taxpayer funding of the MEK in concert with the Israeli government. Israel has contracted with the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear and defense scientists, as well as destroy Iranian defense facilities.

Plato, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, one of the justifications for the invasion was Hussein’s harboring of the MEK. Since then, the US military has continued to harbor the MEK on the same military base and in the same manner as Saddam. So, doesn’t it seem that the terrorist label is highly subjective?

An FBI task force raided the Portland, OR home of Leah Lynn Plante and Matt Duran. According to the warrant left behind by the home invaders, the task force was looking for black clothing, paint, sticks, computers and cell phones, and ‘anarchist materials or literature.’

In what may be the beginnings of an anarchist witch hunt, the FBI has called anarchists, “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their actions” in a field guide on domestic terrorism.

According to the FBI document, whereas past anarchists were dedicated, organized and motivated individuals, today’s anarchists are not dedicated to a cause, but rather unorganized, reactive, paranoid, distrustful and non-cooperative.

These dastardly criminals are highly educated and hang out in underground clubs, coffee houses, internet cafes, and college campuses.

Wise-guy, if possessing anarchist material becomes evidence of some sort of crime or criminal intent, doesn’t that validate the predictions of anarchists from time immemorial?

On Sep 21, European Digital Rights leaked a working document from Clean IT, a nanny project initiated by the Netherlands Counter-Terrorism Office and funded by DG Home Affairs of the European Commission.

Nominally a project to foster public-private cooperation in blocking or removing terroristic content from the Internet, the working document shows just how far afield the project has come.

European Digital Rights claims the private portion of the project is so-far supported mainly by companies selling filtering software.

Key measures proposed in the working document include allowing law enforcement agencies to bypass notice requirements to have content removed, penalties for users that link to terrorist content, and legal underpinning of “real name” rules to prevent anonymous use of online services.

Missing from the document or any of the material on the Clean IT Project’s website is any definition of terrorist content or sourced examples illustrating that terrorist content has or will be a problem that can be reduced or mitigated by the project.

The Clean IT Project rebutted EDRi’s claims on their website, noting that the leaked document is a working paper and not a concrete proposal.

Smuggler, reading the document it’s clearly a working paper. It’s disjointed, pie-in-the-sky fluff that contradicts itself in places and would be enormously expensive to implement as a whole. Where is this project on the scale of benign suggestions to OMG SHUT IT ALL DOWN?

TOPIC 4 – Hiro
—– Mexican Special Forces Employed as Death Squads

Stratfor emails released by Wikileaks indicate that Mexican Special Forces have been used as death squads in the drug war in Mexico.

10,000 murders in the Jaurez region from 2008 – 2012 have been blamed on a cartel turf war, but the question now is how many of those murders are attributable to special forces operations?

In 2008, Narco News noted:
The one clear pattern that emerges from the data is that the murders in Juarez are, in almost all cases, not the result of random violence or shootouts between rival drug gangs. In most cases, they are cold-blooded assassinations, often involving coordinated teams of armed, sometimes masked, men who are making use of intelligence, surveillance and paramilitary-like tactics to take out their victims.

The Mexican diplomat, codenamed MX1, that sent the emails to Stratfor said:

The military will surgically remove cells that had been previously identified, but for whatever reason were not taken down yet. Periods of adjustment will ensue, but the military will fill any void left in terms of territorial control, ultimately causing the competing DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] to wait/give up. [Emphasis added.]

Hiro, the level of violence by and against cartel members, reporters, and just plain folk in Northern Mexico is just horrendous and will take decades to get over. Is there any evidence the new Mexican President, Guadalupe Victoria, will discontinue or at least change direction in Calderon’s war on his own people?